1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a droplet ejection apparatus and a droplet ejection method. Specifically, the invention relates to a droplet ejection apparatus and a droplet ejection method that cause a plurality of ejection components to eject droplets.
2. Description of the Related Art
There have conventionally been known inkjet recording devices (so-called inkjet printers) having an ink jet recording head which, by using an actuator structured by a piezoelectric element or the like, changes the volume of (expands or contracts) a pressure generating chamber into which ink is filled, and, due to the change in pressure at the interior of the chamber caused by this change in volume, causes an ink drop to be ejected from the distal end of a nozzle which is formed to communicate with the pressure generating chamber.
The trend toward increasing the printing speeds of inkjet recording devices has strengthened in recent years. To this end, inkjet recording heads have come to be used in which the inkjet recording head is made to be longer, the number of nozzles per inkjet recording head is increased, and the nozzles are disposed so as to be lined-up in the form of a matrix, thereby enabling image formation over a wide region in a shorter period of time.
When the inkjet recording heads are made to be longer than the width of a recording sheet in such a manner, the number of ejectors composed of the pressure generating chambers, the nozzles and the like is several tends of thousands, namely, huge. The energy to be introduced, therefore, becomes excessive.
In view of such circumstances, various inkjet recording heads which reuse energy have been proposed.
Firstly, inkjet recording heads which use a tank circuit (LC circuit) which uses inductance have been proposed (see, for example, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open (JP-A) Nos. 11-314364, 2000-218782, 2001-026109 and 2003-053973). In all the inkjet recording heads, however, driving circuits are enlarged. For the device in JP-A No. 2000-218782, the number of the inductors should be equal to the number of loads.
Secondly, inkjet recording heads that allow electric charges to move between a load capacitor and an electric charge storage capacitor have been proposed (JP-A Nos. 2000-238264, 2003-285441 and 2004-223770). Since, however, a power source relates to charging of the electric charge storage capacitor, an energy saving effect is low, and a switching component (control) becomes complicated.